It was a long time ago. So long ago that Elvis Presley's song, "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog," was the top song on the AM radio and Hula Hoops were all the rage. The city was South Boston, MA and my home turf was the Old Harbor Projects, located just across from Carson Beach. (Now called the Mary Ellen McCormack Village.)
We were boys, ages eight, nine and ten. We were fast, brave, and always on the lookout for new challenges and things to conquer. We lived, and waited, for any kid on our block of projects to tell us we couldn't do something, or that we were too young or too chicken. Because whenever we heard words like that...we'd do it! Like most kids my age I had plenty of friends, but my closest pals were Eddy and Sonny. Eddy was a chunky kid and mastermind of many of our crazy adventures. He lived on the next floor up from me with his grandmother and uncle, which meant he could pull off more schemes than most kids and get away with them, too. Sonny, on the other hand, was a red-headed kid with a million freckles who spent more time in church than any kid we knew. When Sonny wasn't in church, he was usually with us, undoing whatever he learned in church.
Where we lived was called the "projects," because all the buildings, which were eight floors high and built exactly the same, were shaped like a huge half-square called Section A, B and C. If a kid stood in the courtyard of our unit, Section A was on his left, B in front of him and Section C on his right. Each section was connected in the basement by dark skinny hallways and tunnels that very few kids had ever seen with their own eyes. We used to dare one another to slowly creep down the last flight of stairs to the cellar, one step at a time, then peer around the corner to see if we could see anyone. The first time that I saw beyond the stairway, I saw a lot of gray, peeling paint on the walls, and the only light coming in was from a small dingy window near the top of the cellar wall. One thing that I did see clearly though was a long row of metal cages that went from the floor to the ceiling. Each cage had a door with a round lock and inside each cage I could faintly make out rows of something.... I don't know what..... about "this wide and this tall," hanging on the inside walls of the cages. If we heard a noise, anything thing at all, we'd turn and jet up those stairs and out into safety as fast as we could.
Now the weird thing is that back then, everyone took their garbage out of their apartments into theadjoining hallways and opened up a heavy, black iron door and tossed the trash into the burning incinerator, which is like a gigantic fireplace that went from the basement below up past the top floor. And even though my apartment was on the second floor, sometimes when I opened that heavy, iron door, a loud, roaring, hot wind shot up with the flames, causing me to lean back as I tossed the trash in and quickly slam it shut! Every floor in every unit had its own iron door that gobbled up their trash with fire.
There was a man we called, the Cellar Man, that as far as we knew, lived somewhere down in the basement. He never, ever, came up. His job was to shovel ashes out of the fiery incinerators every morning into trash cans. Every morning you could hear the Cellar Man dragging heavy steel barrels full of ashes across the cellar floor and out near the back door. On Saturdays, me and my pals.... we'd go into stealth mode and sneak on our hands and knees through the bushes that went around to the back of the building. We'd sit there, perfectly still, watching the Cellar Man drag the heaping barrels up a steel plank into a waiting truck. His clothes were dark and gray..... all sooty. He wore a hat, same color. We never really saw his face, and didn't want to either.
Some kids who lived in other units within the projects told us at school what happens if the Cellar Man catches you. They had friends who not only snuck down the cellar stairway, but actually had guts enough to sneak through the dark, skinny tunnels and go looking for this guy. Once, when they were deep into one of the tunnels, they went so far that they lost their way and couldn't go back if they wanted to. So they just kept walking. They were so busy cautiously moving slowly and looking in front of them that they didn't realize that the Cellar Man was closing in from behind. When they heard his footsteps, it was almost too late. The boys screamed and started running full blast towards who knows where. The Cellar Man was right behind them too, yelling, "I'm gonna catch you and throw you into the incinerator!" The boys saw an opening up ahead and flew up the stairs and out the door into the courtyard. It was a close call for sure.
One Saturday, at the end of a school vacation week, Eddy, who lived upstairs had this stupid idea. He figured, if the Cellar Man was busy dragging and loading barrels of ashes out back onto the truck, then this would be a good time to sneak down into the tunnels of the cellar and have a look around. It was also raining outside, and we were totally bored after a week of doing absolutely nothing. We were standing in the doorway looking out at the cold April rain, when Eddy took two steps down toward the cellar and said, "Wanna go?" Sonny, my other pal, said, "I'll sneak around the back and see if the Cellar Man has loaded up his barrels yet." And I said, "I'll be right back!"
What I wanted to do was run up the two flights of stairs to my apartment and lock the darn door behind me and not go back out again all day! Instead, I ran into my bedroom and grabbed my army flashlight that I kept under my bed. It was brown and green camouflage with a belt clip and swivel head so you could shine it around corners. I ran back down the stairs, hoping, actually, that my buddies might have gone home for lunch or left to do something else. They hadn't. They were waiting there like crazy commandos on a mission. Sonny said, "The truck is backing up right now, so now's the time." And so we started down the cellar stairs.
My heart was pounding in my chest as I stepped off the last step onto the floor of the dark, gray cellar. Soon, the skinny hallway was getting darker and darker. We turned left, then right,and kept inching our way along, stopping every twenty steps or so to listen for the Cellar Man. Sonny was in the lead, me in the middle and Eddy, the brainchild of this plan, was taking up the rear. I was so scared I almost forgot that I had my flashlight clipped to my pants. I clicked it on.....lights! Since I had the light, I was elected to move to the front of our little commando line. We passed the cages with the round locks, but I didn't dare shine my light too far into them for fear that the Cellar Man would see us as well. Inch by inch we stepped until we came upon the incinerator. It was big and black and had a little window in the middle. We could see the flames inside that also gave off light that made our hands and faces red.
We went a little further in until the skinny hallway became a creepy tunnel. We stopped, and when welooked where we had been, we could see the red glow of the incinerator about thirty feet behind us. And that's when Eddy started screaming saying, "It's him, he's coming straight at us. Look!"
In the middle of the red glow the Cellar Man yelled, "Who's in my cellar? I've got you now!" We were trapped with only one way out! And like idiots we ran screaming and crying straight at the Cellar Man, hoping that we could somehow get past him and out to safety. Eddy dodged right then left and managed to get past the guy who was yelling and flailing his arms back and forth trying to catch us. The Cellar Man tried to pin Sonny against the wall as I went running by. But Sonny dove though the man's legs and got away too. Sonny and me were running like the wind, side-by-side, with the Cellar Man yelling and running close behind. Suddenly I felt my feet leave the floor.
I was caught! Gripped by a huge, gray arm. The Man, the Cellar Man, kept yelling, "You! You're going straight into my incinerator!" He was yelling, and strangely, as I recalled later, laughing as well. I was kicking and squirming, trying to get free. It was obvious too that my friends were nowhere in sight. At that moment, right then and there, I pissed my pants. I thought I was finished. The Cellar Man finally stopped running with me under his arm when he reached the bottom of the cellar stairs. He flung me around onto my feet and made a "git-out-of-here" gesture with his arms. I flew up the stairs, wet pants and all and ran straight to my apartment and locked myself in.
Two days later my grandmother answered a knock on the door. She said, "Oh, Hi Jim, come in." I walked out of my room and froze in my tracks. It was him, the Cellar Man, and he was smiling and talking softly with my grandmother. My Nana said, "Kevin, come over here, please. Mr. Manley has something to give you." I was nervous but did as I was told. The Cellar Man, I mean, Mr. Manley, reached inside his gray dusty jacket. "Here kid," he said with a wink, "You dropped your flashlight." And as he turned to leave he looked back at me and said, "Stay out of my cellar."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote: When I tell this story before an audience of children, we talk about it afterwards. One of the first questions children ask is if I got in trouble at home for going into the cellar. The answer is no. Next, they ask about the cages, and what was in them that was "this wide and this tall." I tell them that I eventually found out that the cages were used by residents years ago for storage. That's why they had locks on them. And the shapes on the back wall of the cages? Rows of old wall-mounted ironing boards!
Kevin Lee, © All rights reserved.
S-C-A-R-Y-!!!!!!!!!!
I'm glad to already know the ending, in case sometimes you tell it when I'm around. I was biting my nails reading it on the screen!
Martha
Posted by: Martha Schwope | November 13, 2008 at 08:12 PM